[brootstrap]

The game owns and article makes a great point. These games around about high resolution graphics and densely packed pixels. It's about the atmosphere, story, setting, your personal struggle against seemingly impossible odds.

The fact people care about graphic quality is pretty funny to me. Go play the latest FPS online loot shooter if you want "triple A" graphics.

The game is a masterpiece in it's own right. Its like taking a dark souls game and making it bigger and bigger. Then just when you thought you were nearing the end. Oops sorry you are only 30% done with the game!

I'm at 100 hours on PC , getting close to finishing. Some graphic stutters near release but since then i've had no issues at all. Medium level rig.

[oneoff786]

I wish elden ring was smaller. I thought the open world concept was very poorly executed. I didn’t know where to go at first so I explored pretty much the entire open world unable to do much other than run past everything. The remainder of the game was just teleporting around so the open world was irrelevant. The bosses were good. The legacy dungeons were good. But the open world was largely a one time early game tax to find flak upgrades. I felt frustrated that I was not clearly shown where level appropriate content was. I don’t mind the option of seeking inappropriate content, but it should have been more transparent.

I spent the game picking up herbs. Never used any.

I picked up loads of weapons, but couldn’t use any them effectively without respeccing or farming weapon upgrades.

I found very few of the mini dungeons organically and had to look up where to find them but they tended to be pretty dull and reuse the same bosses. The quests were equally inscrutable without a guide. Finding bosses that are just way too strong for you sucks.

Leyndell and onward aren’t really open world. They’re mostly just linear areas, which I liked more but I also suspected was mostly due to budget and scope cuts. I would have gladly traded the vast open world and mini dungeons for a few more well designed legacy dungeons and bosses.

I played with no summons and beat malenia with two whips and no skills for reference if it matters

[the_doctah]

I completely agree about the open world. The complete lack of breadcrumbs or anything to help you understand where to go made it a much worse experience for me, especially as my first souls game. The game even tells you to follow the Guidance of Grace, which leads you directly to Stormveil Castle, which you will be underleveled for.

I tried playing blind and ended up in Caelid (~lvl 60 area) instead of Weeping Peninsula. That's when I noped out and spent the rest of the game with my head buried in the wiki. I couldn't imagine trying to play these games without a wiki.

Everything else I enjoyed for the most part. The controls and hitboxes are a little janky, the platforming sections are total garbage (shoehorned into an old engine that never had it), but the open world execution was by far the worst aspect for me. At some point FromSoftware has to start catering to players new to the genre instead of forcing people to struggle and calling it part of the experience. With 12 mil in early sales I guarantee a bunch of players struggled with these aspects of the early game and dropped it altogether.

[arkaic]

Sounds like you would love the Dark Souls games. They're Elden Ring without open world, and all legacy dungeons.

[cma]

> I felt frustrated that I was not clearly shown where level appropriate content was.

The map indicates the main path with glowy little directional markers all along it. Usually areas around the appropriate section of the main path are level appropriate, but there is much more to explore.

[EddieDante]

I'm at 150 hours on PS4, and probably not anywhere near finishing. The only problem I've had is that sometimes the game freezes when I'm being summoned for co-op, and I end up having the reset the console.

That, and my cat hates sitting in my lap when I play Elden Ring. He can't get comfortable because I'm always on edge, expecting an ambush. He'd rather I played Final Fantasy XIV.

[mrtranscendence]

> That, and my cat hates sitting in my lap when I play Elden Ring.

Yeah, well, my 30kg golden retriever doesn't care what I'm playing, because when she gets on my lap -- and she does so frequently -- I can't do anything else ...

[wintermutestwin]

These posts make me feel like an oldster. I got Elden Ring, but learned that you had to use a controller. Using a controller to play a 1st or 3rd person game feels so wrong to my M+K sensibilities. Maybe I just don't grok it, but using swivel sticks while simultaneously pressing buttons seems so clumsy and weird. I guess I could suffer through the learning curve, but instead, I'll just write off the games that are really designed for console.

[coldpie]

Seems a shame to get hung up on that one thing (I don't know anything about ER's KB/M support), but I understand. Being comfortable with your input method is pretty important. ER definitely stretches gamepad input to the limits. It's pretty often I do the infamous "claw grip"[1] to get access to both the right stick (camera control) and face buttons (actions). If you can get over the controller thing, or find the KB/M controls sufficient, I really recommend it. ER is definitely one of "those" generation-defining games that are really special.

[1] https://i.ytimg.com/vi/-oLlVzXeXOU/maxresdefault.jpg

[HideousKojima]

I've been playing Elden Ring on M+KB, why do you think you have to use a controller? M+KB support was kinda garbage in the PC port of the original Dark Souls but even then it was still there.

[peanut_worm]

The style of gameplay just works much better with a controller. I would say the same thing about most melee oriented action games. Devil May Cry with a keyboard is horrible.

[egypturnash]

I'm fifty years old - surely a fellow oldster by now - and mouse+keyboard always feels incredibly awkward for any kind of fast action game. It's a matter of what you're used to; I've been doing most of my gaming on consoles since leaving my old Amiga for a Mac.

My husband used to be like you until they got into Nuclear Throne, now they're at home with a controller for games that work better that way. A twin-stick shooter is probably much better to learn a controller with than Elden Ring IMHO. Or a friendlier jumpy-adventurey-fighty game like Spyro or Sonic or Breath of the Wild that's built with the assumption they might be some kid's very first encounter with this style of game, and has appropriate amounts of training.

But really, there's only so much time in a life to play video games, and only so much time in a life for everything you enjoy doing. If don't wanna get used to a controller then, well, that's fine. You'd miss out on a ton of great games even if your day job was nothing but playing them.

[tstrimple]

I didn't have any trouble completing the game and killing all of the extra bosses with mouse and keyboard. I could see how some of the horse parkour might be easier with a controller, but never felt like I needed it for fighting. I find the ability to turn much more quickly to be a huge advantage of the mouse over the controller.